The elevator ride to the sixth floor felt agonizingly long. Helen Brooks kept her eyes fixed on the silver doors, her posture rigid.

"He was brought in late last night via private transport," Helen explained, keeping her voice low. "Multiple organ failure. His personal physician is Dr. Vance, but Hale's corporate office requested a dedicated primary care nurse who wasn't tied to his board of directors."

"Why me?" Emily asked. "I'm general ward staff."

"Because your file says you don't care about headlines, Parker," Helen said bluntly as the doors slid open. "And because you won't be intimidated by a man who owns half the state. Just keep him stable. The family board meeting is scheduled for Friday morning, and they want him alive until then."

"Family?" Emily frowned, stepping out into the hushed corridor. "I thought he didn't have any."

"Not close ones," Helen muttered. "Just corporate vultures waiting for the carcass to cool. His estranged nephew, Harrison Hale, has already called twice demanding updates on the estate asset distribution."

Emily walked down the polished corridor toward Room 608. As she approached, she noticed two private security guards standing outside the door, wearing dark suits that looked completely out of place in a hospital wing. They eyed her coldly until Helen flashed her badge.

When Emily pushed open the heavy wooden door, the contrast was jarring.

The room smelled faintly of expensive cedar and stale ozone. Walter Hale sat propped up in a motorized recliner rather than the bed. Despite the terminal grayness of his skin and the oxygen cannula resting beneath his hawk-like nose, his eyes were sharp. They locked onto Emily with the terrifying intensity of a predator that hadn't eaten in days.

"You're late," Walter rasped.

"Shift change starts at seven, Mr. Hale," Emily replied evenly, stepping inside and checking the IV drip rate. "I'm Nurse Parker. I'll be handling your vitals today."

Walter didn't answer right away. He watched her hands—hands that were steady, efficient, and completely unbothered by the medical machinery humming around them.

"You smell like rain," Walter noted softly. "And cheap gas station coffee."

Emily paused, glancing up. "I can step out and use hand sanitizer if the coffee bothers you."

"No," Walter said, a faint, humorless smile touching his thin lips. "It smells real. Everything else in my life smells like corporate law firms and bleach."

Over the next four hours, Emily worked silently. She took his blood pressure, adjusted his oxygen levels, and charted his diminishing urine output. She knew from the telemetry monitors and his lab work that Walter Hale had less than seventy-two hours left. His kidneys were shutting down. His heart was a tired engine running on fumes.

Yet, he didn't complain about the pain. He didn't curse the nurses or demand things he couldn't have. He just watched her.

Around noon, a commotion erupted outside in the hallway.

A booming, arrogant voice echoed through the door. "I don't care what the doctors say! I am Harrison Hale, and I have every right to see my uncle right now!"

Emily looked toward the door. Through the glass window, she saw a tall, impeccably tailored man in his mid-forties shouting at the security guards. His silver-threaded suit screamed wealth, and his slicked-back dark hair matched his predatory expression.

Walter’s jaw tightened. A deep, guttural sigh escaped his chest.

"Vultures," Walter whispered, his voice shaking with pure exhaustion. "They're circling before I've even stopped breathing."

"Do you want me to call security, Mr. Hale?" Emily asked, her hand hovering over the call button.

"No," Walter said, turning his gaze back to Emily with an unsettling, burning clarity. He reached out with a trembling, liver-spotted hand and caught the edge of her white sleeve. "Lock the door, Emily."

"Mr. Hale, I can't—"

"Lock it," he commanded, his voice carrying an unexpected echo of the titanium will that had built an empire. "And listen to me very carefully. I am dying. My lawyers are a pack of jackals, and my nephew wants to strip my foundation dry before my body is cold. I have no children. No one who ever loved me for anything other than a signature on a check."